A recent study shows that if the hours spent working and sleeping are deducted from average Chinese people's daily lives, the average amount of leisure time for almost a quarter of ordinary people is less than an hour, and another 20 percent have less than two free hours. And almost 10 percent of those polled have no leisure time at all.

The survey suggests that leisure is a luxury for more than 50 percent of Chinese people.

A lack of leisure time takes a toll on our health and makes us gradually alienated from our loved ones. This is how it goes: First, we get too busy to exercise and may even start skipping meals. Then we begin to steal time from our sleep. Soon we may run short of time to even call home or visit friends. It is not a great way to live, right?

So, where has our leisure time gone? The most obvious reason might be the ever-fiercer competition followed by huge survival pressure which penetrates into every corner of society. Many employees, especially those in big Chinese cities, complain that they are overworked. They have no choice but to choose lifestyles that put themselves last.

For the average busy and harried citizen, be sure to remember not to bring home their unfinished tasks from the office. And make the time to exercise because it will definitely do you much good.

People plagued with the ideal of perfectionism may find themselves with very little leisure time in their daily lives. Perfectionists, who often place high demands on themselves, often find it difficult to leave their tasks undone and try very hard to get things right. And they find it equally hard to truly relax. In their minds, every hour in the day should be spent productively. It is easy to see why such people usually have little leisure time. But no one can do it all; you can lower your standards and still retain a sense of self-worth.

Some people never realize that getting hooked on work, especially work they love, can be a problem. Work life balance? For far too many workaholics, it is all the same thing.

Indeed, happy is the man who can enjoy his work, compared with those who are working at jobs they despise. But any form of addiction is harmful. As mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell put it "one of the symptoms of approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important, and that to take a holiday would bring all kinds of disaster. If I were a medical man, I should prescribe a holiday to any patient who considered his work important."

Lin Maoxian, a foreign salesperson with a Shenzhen-based import and export company